Scatmania

VANILLA SKY

Perhaps Vanilla Sky wasn’t the best choice of film to finish Troma Night last night on, based on the dream I had:

I dreamt that I was dreaming, and that during that inner dream I became lucid [not so hard, actually, and something I periodically do normally]. In the inner dream, I’d broken my phone while snowboarding, and needed to replace the battery, and so, in a test of dream control, I simply made a new battery materialise and installed it. However aware I was that I was in a dream, however, I didn’t come to realise that I was dreaming that I was dreaming - I was convinced that I was aware of my waking life as the one that I had in the first-level dream - until I “woke up” and, a few minutes later, achieved lucidity again.

Strange, but not really unexpected: mixing my head with films that have themes of altered states of conciousness almost invariably gives these kinds of results.

A LETTER

We’ve got a letter here addressed to Bryn - it came through the letterbox yesterday evening at some point. If you’d like to pick it up, Bryn, we’ll be around all morning and then we’re disappearing (see below).

A TRIP

Claire and I are off to Preston this afternoon to visit my family before moving on to Manchester tomorrow, where we’re seeing Foo Fighters. We’re back late on Monday night/early Tuesday morning. I gather that Geek Night B is taking place at Rory’s tonight, if anybody’s that way inclined, but I’m afraid you can’t have Pandemic, because I’ve promised to play it with my family. Next week!

Last night I had a particularly vivid and unusual dream:

JTA and I were homeless and living on the streets of some foreign city (it was somewhat reminiscent of London, but most folks spoke French, so I guess it wasn’t); jobless, hungry, and generally sleeping in the central railway station, except when the police or station staff moved us on.

In order to make some money - and as much to give us something to do with our time and to keep our spirits up - we decided to put together a piece of musical street theatre. For some reason I was carrying a concertina (Claire’s?) and was quite able to play it, and JTA had a reasonable singing voice, so we began to put together a cautionary tale that we would perform, telling the story of JTA’s life and how he got into the unfortunate position that we were now in.

In our story, JTA was bullied into going out and getting a job by his mother and sister in order to bring money into the family house, but he is lazy and he cannot hold down a job. Looking for a quick (and easy) solution, he turns to crime, and, after he accidentally murders a man he intended to rob, he flees the country to escape arrest.

Later, we went back and made some artistic adjustments to the story, in order to hammer some extra morals home - our adaptations included JTA’s introduction to a life of crime being through a shady character who accosted him on his way back from his first stable job (a cleaner at a zoo), and tempting him with “easier work,” and a change to the story of his family to make them seem less demanding and more tolerant (making his inability to support them comeacross as more shocking).

Through a variety of makeshift costume changes, I would play a number of secondary parts  - JTA’s mother (who didn’t look anything like his mother actually does, and even less so when played by me), an employer, the shady character - and narrate his downfall, while JTA would play himself: initially a cheery but lazy “country bumpkin” character who feels wronged by his bad luck and eventually comes to resent the world around him.

At the point I woke up, we were still tweaking songs and hadn’t actually performed it. But it had cheered us up no end.

There was a particular song I’ve been trying to remember a line from all morning. Early on, after JTA has “lost yet another job” and is walking home, we had a line that made a clever pun on English pronounciation of the French word emploi (employment) -much of the play was done bilingually - but all I can remember is the time signature of the song and the general theme. I remember that when I woke up, I knew what it was and thought “Wow; that’s brilliant - when I blog about this dream, I must include that!” But by the time I got to a computer I’d forgotten it. Ah well.

Went out last night for curry and beer to celebrate Paul’s birthday (yes, we’re all well aware that Paul’s birthday was almost a month ago, but this was the first chance we’d had to really get together and make an ocassion of it). It was great to get together with a handful of folks rarely seen in the same place outside of Troma Night - and in some cases, recently, not even then - and have a good night out.

At the end of the evening I was quite tipsy; a direct result of the fact that or a few hours before the curry I’d been “warming up” with ales in the Ship & Castle with Matt P. And, as you may have noticed by now, there’s a strong correlation between me going to bed drunk and me blogging about particularly unusual dreams. I skipped a dream that I couldn’t be arsed to blog about, near the end of last month, under similar intoxication. I’d made some notes on it, as I try to with everything I dream about, but never found time to write it up to standards of internet legibility (whatever that can be taken as meaning).

In any case, last night was a classic example of me dreaming within-a-dream, which I gather is something a lot of people haven’t experienced (for me, while not commonplace, it’s not terribly rare, either, for me to “wake up” within a dream, or to remember previous dreams as dreams within the one I’m currently ‘in’). Note the double-indentation to ease understanding of which dream I’m referring to:

I had been hosting a house party of some variety, in a somewhat larger (and significantly tidier) version of The Cottage, and it was beginning to wind up - most of the guests had gone home, except for a few small, scattered groups in different parts of the building (I mentioned that it was bigger than The Cottage usually is, right? - there are times that the word “mansion” could have come to hand). JTA, Claire and Ruth were somewhere upstairs; Bryn was talking to Andrew Rawlins (!) in a kitchen reminiscent of my dad’s house; and I was in the living room, talking to Penny.

If I remember rightly we were talking about oral sex technique. So, just a regular conversation for me, you’re probably thinking. And that’s about the time that we kissed.

We hid that we’d been kissing from Bryn and Andrew as they came through the living room, said goodbye, got their coats and left. And again, when Gareth, Penny’s partner, arrived by car to pick her up. And then I went to bed.

And then I woke up. I don’t specifically remember waking up, but I remember having a moment of realisation that everything that had just happened was a dream. It was an unusual dream, sure (although not entirely unpleasant: Penny’s pretty hot), but just a dream, and so I got on with my day. Leaving Claire in bed, I went to work, and I remember thinking about the fact that I would undoubtedly blog about the dream I’d had, and that I hoped I wouldn’t alarm or embarrass Penny by doing so!

And then I woke up. Actually, this time, and there was a moment of confusion as I remembered that it was Ruth I’d spent the night with last night, not Claire at all, and I spent the first few minutes of the morning trying to work out where the dreams began and ended. Perhaps more confusingly, I discovered when I woke up that I’d somehow, in the night, managed to cut my hand and I was bleeding all over the place. I snapped the following photo after I’d cleaned it up a bit.

Ruth theorised that she attacked me in my sleep because she was jealous that I was kissing Penny in my dreams, going on to add that she wanted to be dreaming of kissing Penny. But I’m not sure if she’d approve of me blogging that, so you should pretend that I didn’t.

Do you or anybody you know routinely dream that you are dreaming? Or wake up from a dream with an unusual injury? Or have dreams that involve your friends cheating on their partners with you?

Two more particularly strange dreams last night, probably owing at least slightly by the amount I drank at the SmartData Christmas meal, beforehand… and perhaps owing more to the phase I’ve been going though of consistently remembering what are usually quite trippy dreams. I’ve not been blogging them all (I had a dream the night before last, or thereabouts, in which both my grandfathers [actually already dead] died in quick succession, which was a bit odd) because I’ve not had much spare time in which to blog at all, but I can’t really not share the unusual stories my brain was telling me last night.

The Company Picnic Dream

The first of these dreams I remember because I woke up parched at about 3am, having not had quite enough water between stopping drinking alcohol and going to bed. It’s very obviously inspired quite heavily by the SmartData Christmas meal:

Simon, Alex, Gareth and I - everybody present at the Christmas dinner earlier in the evening - were having a picnic on the Aber promenade. We’d laid out a picnic rug right at the edge of the prom, where the drop-off to the beach begins, and we were eating soup from bowls. The tide was in and it was getting dark, and occasional waves would crash against the prom and splash us, so we all got off the picnic rug and dragged it further away from the sea. We were still getting sprayed and our soup was getting cold, so I suggested that we go to Paul’s flat, nearby, where we could re-heat it.

When we got to Paul’s flat he wasn’t there, but Ruth was. She said that Paul wouldn’t mind us using his oven [!] to re-heat our soup, so we put our bowls in the oven and turned it on. Paul’s living room had distinct elements of The Flat and The Cottage to it, but the staircase downstairs was the one from my dad’s house. After a while, people started to arrive for Geek Night - just the usual people one would expect, but also two women I didn’t recognise. I went down the stairs to collect a box full of board games, and the stairs looked a lot like those at my dad’s house, but with the carpet we had when I was young.

I picked up the blue plastic box of board games [the same one that, in real life, has been used for months to transport games to and from Rory’s place], but it was overfilled and hard to control, so I asked JTA to carry some of the games, which he did. Later, I persuaded Claire to carry some, too, although she objected to having to help. The box for the Friends & Foes expansion pack to Lord Of The Rings fell open, and I had to pick up all the pieces.

The Animated Cat Dream

The second dream of last night is far more weird and convoluted. It’s all-too-easy to find meaning in it relating to my life and the people in it, but I can assure you that if that appears to be the case, it’s coincidental - large segments of it are from a recurring dream I’ve had several times in the last seven or eight years. This doesn’t help my case for not being a fruitcake, though, I suppose. In any case:

The dream is told from a perspective in which I am an observer - like watching a film - rather than something of which I am part of with which I can interact. During the dream, I was aware that the story I was following was something I had seen before (previous occurrences of dreaming this, which is one of the far-less-frequent recurring stories I find in my dreams). Like previous times, however, I’ve had a sensation of "seeing more" in it this time around than any previous time [another common theme in several of my recurring dreams is a feeling that I’m being told a story in fragments, seeing a bigger picture every time]: a clearer picture, a more-understandable plot, and a longer and better-planned tale.

The dream is also always told through the medium of animation, and the animation style in itself is worthy of mention. It has a particularly hand-drawn feel to it, uses very strong blocks of colour, a slightly-too-small frame rate, and it is animated entirely without outlines around the characters and their features. It’s very slightly glossy, like poster paint. Those "common" bits aside, here’s the dream:

An anthropomorphic black tom cat walks up a stairwell, as seen from a "floating camera" ascending the stairs ahead of him, in a grubby, run-down old house. He has a cheeky grin on his face as he reaches the top of the stairs and enters what appears to be his bedroom, and makes the bed, while we hear his voice as a voice-over monologue. He’s trying to impress a woman he lives with in order to sleep with her. He gets into the bed.

Later, the woman comes home. She’s tall with long unkempt blonde hair, and she’s wearing a black dress, and she’s animated in the same style as the cat (although she’s the most human-looking character in the entire story). She goes to the bedroom, and it becomes apparent [from the voiceover? I don’t remember] that it’s her room, not the cat’s. She appears to be angry that the cat has crept in to her bed, and she sternly demands that he returns to his own room. He slinks out, and she follows him, watching him skulk back to his own room, where she insists that she must punish him for his impertinence. A series of kinky games ensue, and it’s obvious that what I’m now seeing is the true nature of the relationship between the cat and this woman: one based on cheeky misbehaviour, control, sex, and sadomasochism. She threatens him, and slaps him, and makes him sit bare-bottomed on a hot radiator, and as the camera pulls away from the scene we see some text appear that for some reason tell us their "safe word" (well, a "safe phrase", really): it begins "I wish I knew the name of…" and finishes with a monicker by which we know the woman. [but since waking, I don’t remember what it is]

The dream shows another two inhabitants of the house [only one of which I can recall well enough to describe] - one of these has distinctly pig-like features. He’s excitable and slightly nervous and talks with a stutter, but he’s likable and gets on well with the other people he lives with, including the other one in this scene. The two talk [but I don’t recall about what] as the opening credits begin to appear (large, serifed white letters) and the view explores the house, seeing a great deal of filth and squalor and a generally disturbing level of decay. At one point, we see an ill and dying rat bite off and eat the eye (and surrounding face) of a dead and decomposing rat.

Some time later [there’s a huge plot hole here, and I’m convinced my brain simply hasn’t seen fit to fill it in yet], a black bakelite telephone rings at the house, and the woman answers it. We hear the voice on the other end of the phone threaten [perhaps blackmailing] her, and she appears genuinely scared. She tries to respond, boldly, to hide her fear, but the voice on the phone is being played from an old-fashioned record turntable in a car parked over the street, connected to a car-phone. The cat, the woman, the pig-man, and the fourth housemate gather to discus what to do about this threat.

New aspects in this dream since the last time I had it include: a great deal more clarity on the animation style of the cat (and the woman, to a lesser extent), the discovery that the woman and the cat have a "safe word," the dead rat (the other rat has always featured, but it’s new to see it being cannibalistic), and the woman’s face while she is being threatened (previously, I’ve "been looking at" the record player at the time).

So, that’s another episode in one of my more-unusual recurring dreams (and not a common one; I’ve only had that particular dream about four times so far, as far as I can tell). Interpretations, as always, welcome, but if you’d prefer to just sit quietly and think, "wow, that guy’s fucked up," that’s cool too.

Well, I’m in Derby (after a hideously long and complicated journey involving long train delays, diversions, and a taxi ride - lost - around the middle of Derby city centre) visiting my friend Katie.

And another strange dream for my collection. But this one isn’t suitable for print (no, not in that way), so you’ll have to wait and ask about it.

Back in Aber tomorrow afternoon. Have a great Troma Night 200!

Another strange dream last night:

I was in a small aircraft (one aisle, two seats either side, about 80 seats in total, two jet engines, for those who feel the need to identify the aircraft in my dreams), sat by a window on the left hand-side, when the right-hand engine caught fire. The plane was forced to make an emergency water landing somewhere off the coast of India. The other passengers and I were all instructed to put on our life-jackets, fasten our seat belts, and brace for impact, but as the plane went down, I suddenly came to an understanding that we were all going to be okay. I took off my seatbelt and stood up moments before the plane hit the water, and (despite a little juddering) I was perfectly okay. Around me people were panicking, but I was completely calm.

Read into that whatever you like.

Suppose I’d better start my Christmas shopping, today.

Last night’s dream:

I visited the house of Simon [my boss] to collect £49.97 which, in my dream, he owed me. He and his wife, Jill, were there. Simon gave me a £50 note,  but I didn’t have three pence in change, so I have him a five pence piece and he gave me two pennies.

Perhaps there’s something wrong with me.

Another unusual dream last night. I’d meant to blog about it earlier in the day, before it faded, but it’s been a ludicrously busy day with one thing and another and I didn’t get a chance. I slept kind-of fitfully, I think, and I’m pretty sure this dream came to me in two distinct chapters, because I remember details that I’d become aware of after falling asleep a second time, even though they applied to the dream I’d remembered after waking up for the first time during the night. Strange.

Claire and I were at Gregynog, just as we were last month, to help out with the Computer Science Department away weekend. Unusually, though, the majority of the guests were accommodated in tents scattered around the grounds of the hall, rather than in bedrooms in the building itself. We’d arrived early in the day, and had trouble persuading the staff that we were supposed to be there, and when we were finally able to drop off our bags we decided to wander into the nearby town [there isn’t actually a town for miles and miles around] and look around.

In need of some lunch, we got a taxi and asked for a lift to a cafe we’d heard about, but he took us to a beach. We walked along a rickety walkway (which had evidently been replaced recently, but not very well) laid over the beach, and it was hard to follow because it was becoming covered in sand, but we just about found our way, despite protests from Claire that we should try a different route. The beach opened up to a series of villas and some kind of tourist resort, and we realised that the taxi had dropped us off far further from the cafe than we had imagined.

We took a shortcut through a dry ski slope, and I remember walking across a very high open-sided bridge, which Claire again objected to.

I’m sure there were significant other bits to the dream, but I don’t remember them now. Strange stuff. Perhaps I need to relax a little and think less.

Strange dream last night. I only remember fragments of it, but here’s what I do:

At some point during it, I left work at lunchtime to visit my dad and my sisters (who lived, conveniently, within walking distance of work). I bought a bag of sherbert along the way, but I was disappointed with how clumpy it was. I met my sisters - Sarah and Becky - on the way to my dad’s house, and Becky told me that she’s just got a job working at a chain bakery (a Greggs-like place) conveniently situated at the end of my dad’s road. Sarah teased Becky about the low level of skill required to do her job, and they argued. Oh, and both Sarah and Becky were black - I’m not sure how that’s relevant, it wasn’t important in the dream, I don’t think, and in fact it’s only now, thinking back over the dream, that I’ve noticed that that’s a little unusual.

In any case; when we got to my dad’s (and I’d almost finished my bag of sherbert) he tried to persuade me that I needed to start running up and down a hill in order to get into training for some kind of event, but I pointed out that I needed to get back to work, so I left.

When I got back to work, the caterers were carrying some kind of large soup pan and a ladle along the corridor to the kitchen on our floor.

The creepy bit of this is that when I got to work this morning and popped my head into the kitchen opposite our office, there is a large soup pan in there. It’s a fair bit smaller than the one in my dream, but it’s in the same style. Weird.

Interpretations welcome, as usual, but don’t expect to make sense of me.